What a Diff'rence Some "Paint" Makes

[radiophoto]

I'm donating a framed print to a silent auction (the annual Literacy Council SCRABBLE^TM tournament, of which I am also the quasi-annual MC, due to my velvety-smooth speaking voice and rapier wit, not to mention my extreem speling abillutee), and I decided on one that I shot in San Antonio a few years ago, using my Argus C-3 and some expired Plus-X Pan.  When I first opened it in Photoshop it looked OK with the exception of some dust specks, which I cleaned up using the Patching Tool (my favorite tool, or at least the one I use the most).

Here's what it looks like straight out of the folder with no editing:


As you can see, not a lot of detail present in the darker areas, and I thought that would be fine, since the main focus was to be the building in the background with the Texas flag.

Then, I figured, since it has a vintage look to it already, why not tint it and see what you get?  I chose a blue tint because of the prominent sky (and also because I didn't want just sepiatone), and lookie here what happened:


Holy cats!  Where did all that foreground detail come from?

So I think it's amazing what happened here.  I'm an absolute novice with Photoshop, using it to edit out flaws, resize, crop, and that's about it, so this is like "magic" to me.

Any comments?  Opinions?

[LarryD]

This is another reason I scan B&W in color many times as I can pull more detail out of the scans with post processing through the Magic of color channels and layers.

[radiophoto]

Well, now I'm at work, and I notice that on my work monitor I can see more detail in the first pic.  I guess it's not so much "magic" as I described above, as it is the necessity of adjusting the contrast on my home monitor.  :p

Color channels?  Layers?  What are those?   :confused:  See, I need a Photoshop course.

[LarryD]

I took a free one through the local college.